Commentary: Why I Strongly Support Measure W--The Parcel Tax

I have been thinking about writing this commentary for several days now, ever since I put the work into the two articles last week on the parcel tax. As I was putting together those articles, I questioned myself. Why was I going through all this effort in support of this measure? This is not generally what the Vanguard does. The Vanguard covers the dark underbelly of Davis, exposes malfeasance in government, protects people from the excesses of governmental power, shines light on subjects not often covered enough. Why this issue?

As I was pondering this question, the answer of course was right in front of my face. The answer actually came to me last week during my interview with Jann Murray-Garcia.

Some people have used the closing of Valley Oak as an excuse to vote against the parcel tax. However, I think they have it backwards. You see, no one supported keeping Valley Oak open more than I did. I will match my 70 articles on or about Valley Oak, the late night meetings, the special coverage, against anyone's passion. Unless you sat on Davis OPEN itself, you will not win. And even then, I'll take it to a tie unless you are a certain dragon and the lovely lady who stands inside there come rain, heat, or fog.

No folks, if you believe in Valley Oak and the Valley Oaks of the world, you need to support the parcel tax. If you are worried about the achievement gap, then you need to support the parcel tax. If you do not want future parents to anguish over what school their kids will go to, then you need to support the parcel tax.

You see, unfortunately, and I am not casting aspersions at anyone, it's just the way things are right now, but when the economy goes south, when funding gets tight, the first things that go are funding to special programs and unfortunately by special programs I mean minority schools in Davis.

When I first saw the budget cuts list last winter, one of the things that drew my attention was cutting the climate coordinator position. I have been critical of the climate coordinator. But I also know how hard and how long people struggled to get that position created in the first place. The Human Relations Commission had a townhall meeting with former Superintendent David Murphy on the issue of bullying and racism, hundreds of parents came, students came forward with horror stories, it took a lot of work. Superintendent Murphy was at times intransigent. But in the end, the HRC and the community won out.

And now it was going to be gone in one fell swoop. It is not because the position is not important, it is not because the school board was against having the position, it is simply that when you have a choice because cutting elementary school science and the climate coordinator, it is not really much of a debate. And yet I know full well why that position was created in the first place and it will hurt a lot of kids if it is canceled.

I remember the meeting in 2007 when they were discussing the report from the Achievement Gap Task force and their recommendations, and how Tansey Thomas stood up and pointed out a very similar report from 1990 that was put on the shelf as soon as passions cooled and times got tough. I remember that in 2007, every single candidate running for the board brought up that as one of their goals--to help close the achievement gap. I do not know if I have heard the word uttered in 2008 and you know why? Because they are fighting to keep from firing 100 teachers.

At the end of the day, I believe in my heart of hearts that when budget times get tough, the first people to suffer are those who can least afford to suffer. Those who are the most vulnerable. It happens in all walks of life. The people who suffer the most are the most recent ones hired, those at the bottom end of the totem pole, those who are least able to create a safety net.

In Davis, I believe that the children of affluent middle class backgrounds will thrive regardless of whether or not the parcel tax passes. Are they better off with better schools with more challenging programs? Of course. However, they will prosper regardless. It is the children of those who are less fortunate who will not prosper under more difficult times with programs cut. These are the most vulnerable kids. These will be the ones to suffer the most. The children who go to the Valley Oaks of the world who had a school where they were thriving only to see it closed due to budget considerations. And yes, I am convinced that there are other schools that are very good in this district, but I do not believe you can replace that sense of empowerment and sense of community that was at work at Valley Oak Elementary School.

And though Valley Oak is now closed until further notice, there is still much to fight to protect, which is why I cannot in good conscience punish other children for mistakes made by the school board.

People have talked about fiscal mismanagement as a reason to vote against the parcel tax. I know something about fiscal mismanagement in this district as I spent a good four or five months researching what had happened in the district under Superintendent David Murphy and Budget Officer Tahir Ahad.

A few things about that I want to share. The first thing is that I did this investigation with full and complete cooperation from the school district and several of the board members. This investigation would not have been possible without their assistance. Moreover, the district went above and beyond the call of duty in assisting me. They absolutely wanted the public to know exactly what had happened under the previous administration. Two of the board members went on the record to discuss it with me.

The second thing is that the new school board, elected in 2005, cleaned up most of the problems that had occurred under the previous administration. Tahir Ahad left the district and eventually was replaced by Bruce Colby as the new chief budget officer. David Murphy left the district and eventually was replaced by James Hammond as the new superintendent. Frankly, James Hammond alone is reason to vote for this parcel tax, I cannot think of a better person to do this job than Dr. Hammond. I talked to him the day after the board decided not to support him on the charter school and all he could talk about was how sorry he was that he did not have another week to convince them to take the chance on it. He was genuine about that loss. No blame, no political posturing, just sincere compassion for those students.

The fiscal problems in this district are not the result of the actions of the current board. Not one single member of this board was around when the decision was made to put the facilities bond on the ballot. Not one single member of this board was there when the decision was made to hire Tahir Ahad or David Murphy for that matter. And not one single member of this board was there when the deadline was missed for matching funds to Montgomery.

But the majority of this board was in place when every single one of the FCMAT recommendations were carried out, when a new CBO and Superintendent were hired, when the Montgomery funding was rescued by a concerted and joint effort of the board and the interim Superintendent, when the fiscal ship of this district was righted. This board deserves the trust of the voters in handling the taxpayers money and giving the board the resources to continue to make this district one of the best in the state.

Finally folks, people are complaining about raising taxes again, one year after the previous parcel tax was passed. People are complaining that the number is $120 rather than $80 which would have been more likely to pass. I can appreciate both of those concerns.

However as far as the $120 goes, the district is asking for the amount of money that they believe they need in order to continue to fund the programs that have been listed here.

I have been critical of the city's overindulgence of certain public employee salaries and t he risk of raising more taxes to pay for their fiscal irresponsibility. Moreover, the amount of money people will pay in water rate hikes will dwarf the meager $120 annual tax increase. We are talking about up to $200 per month for water rate hikes compared with $120 per year for the parcel tax. This is on top of other fees, taxes, and possible rate hikes. There is really no comparison. Moreover, if I am going to pay out more money, I would choose to give money to help children be educated and help teachers earn a better living. Those are my priorities.

My biggest fear in all of this is that people may use the wrong reasons to not support education in Davis. It is not the children's fault that the previous administration made a series of very serious errors. It is not their fault that you may feel overburdened in your taxes, overwhelmed by a poor economy, a bad housing market, high fuel prices, etc. I understand all of that. But at the end of the day once again, we only get one shot at educating the youth in this community, they get only one shot at childhood, and for some kids, they need all the help they can get.

I hope for their sake and theirs alone you will consider supporting this tax as a modest investment into the future of these children, this community and this country.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

New York Times Covers Former Davis Police Chief

Even if the article in Sunday's New York Times were not about our old friend, former Davis Police Chief Jim Hyde it would be pretty fascinating.

That is because in a lot of ways there is tremendous change going on in American society, equivalent perhaps to the changes that occurred in the 20th century when large numbers of African-Americans fled from the south to northern cities which in turn spawned a flight of white city dwellars to the suburbs. Now the rising cost of urban housing is causing almost a reverse migration with many whites moving back to the cities and many African-Americans fleeing to the more affordable suburbs aided at times by programs like the Section 8 federal housing program.

Writes the New York Times:

"Under the Section 8 federal housing voucher program, thousands of poor, urban and often African-American residents have left hardscrabble neighborhoods in the nation’s largest cities and resettled in the suburbs.

Law enforcement experts and housing researchers argue that rising crime rates follow Section 8 recipients to their new homes, while other experts discount any direct link. But there is little doubt that cultural shock waves have followed the migration. Social and racial tensions between newcomers and their neighbors have increased, forcing suburban communities like Antioch to re-evaluate their civic identities along with their methods of dealing with the new residents."

In addition to these forces, the foreclosure crisis plays a role as well:

"The foreclosure crisis gnawing away at overbuilt suburbs has accelerated that migration, and the problems. Antioch is one of many suburbs in the midst of a full-blown mortgage meltdown that has seen property owners seeking out low-income renters to fill vacant homes."

Like I said, this would be an interesting story even without the presence of the formerly polarizing police chief of Davis in the story. The issue of "overbuilt suburbs" could probably keep us going for a week with talks about new waves in smart development and questions about what will happen to suburbs as towns struggle to redevelop their cores in hopes of cutting down on the need to consume gasoline in commutes.

For all the talk about racial reconciliation, it appears that the presence of African-Americans in a town like Antioch is just as explosive today as the notion of forced busing and integration was in the 1970s. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

On the front lines of these kinds of cultural struggles is often the face of law enforcement and it is here where our old friend rears his head once again and plants himself firmly in the conscience this time not just of Davis but apparently the entire nation.

The action filed as Antioch last month claims discrimination, intimidation, and illegal property searches. Police allegedly routinely questioned and harassed Section 8 residents about their housing status, writing letters to the county's housing authority recommending termination of subsidies.

According to the Times article:

"A December 2007 study of Antioch police records by Public Advocates, a law firm in San Francisco, counted 67 investigations of black households, compared with 59 of white families; black households, it found, are four times as likely to be searched based on noncriminal complaints and to be contacted by the police in the first place."

Like any profiling claim, the contentions are difficult to sustain even with such statistics--for all statistics can be a matter of coincidence as well as intent.

For their part, Chief Jim Hyde of the Antioch Police Department denies these claims.

But here is a very telling statement in the New York Times article:

"Chief Hyde also said that the local housing authority was not meeting its obligation to screen tenants properly, and that as his department focused on nuisance issues, the police had become a de facto enforcement arm of the federal government."

The question that immediately jumps to my mind is whether this an appropriate role for the police department to play. I understand the frustration that the police may have if the federal government is being negligent in its duties to enforce its own laws, but at the same time, if the police have gone beyond their own charge, they invite these sorts of complaints and law suits.

The Times article tells a number of stories about white residents complaining about the problems that the Section 8 housing has brought.

There is clear conflict within these stories on the one hand fear and on the other hand a recognition that there is a racial component to that fear and wondering if that is an appropriate response.

Laura Reynolds, 36, an emergency room nurse, said that she often came home to her Country Hills development tract after working a late-shift to find young black teenagers strolling through her neighborhood.

“I know it sounds horrible, but they’re scary. I’m sorry,” said Ms. Reynolds, who like her two friends said she was conflicted about her newfound fear of black youths. “Sometimes I question myself, and I think, Would I feel this way if they were Mexican or white?”

Is this is a legitimate fear and concern or is it being overblown by cultural and racial stereotypes? The problem that I fear is that some are playing on the legitimate fears of residents to their own political advantage. This is far from a new phenomena.

Brad Seligman is a lawyer with a nonprofit civil rights advocacy group based in San Francisco, the Impact Fund. They are one of the groups along with the ACLU, Public Advocates, and the NAACP that have accused the city's police department of racial profiling.

Mr. Seligman is quoted in the New York Times saying:

“Instead of driving while black, it’s renting while black.”

The New York Times talks about an African-American couple, Thomas and Karen Coleman, two of the plaintiffs.

In June 2007, a neighbor told the police that Mr. Coleman had threatened him. Officers from the police community action team visited the house and demanded to be allowed in.

“I cracked the door open, but they pushed me out of the way,” Ms. Coleman said.

The officers searched the house even though they did not have a warrant, said the Colemans, who are now part of the class-action suit against the department. The police questioned Mr. Coleman, a parolee at the time, about his living arrangement. He explained that he and his wife were separated but in the process of reconciling. The police accused the family of violating a Section 8 rule that only listed tenants can live in a subsidized home.

After the raid, officers made repeated visits to the Coleman home and to Mr. Coleman’s job at a movie theater. They also sent a letter to the county housing department recommending that the Colemans be removed from federal housing assistance, a recommendation the authority rejected.

“They kept harassing me until I was off parole,” Mr. Coleman said.

If the account of the Colemans is accurate, we see a number of problems with not only the police's conduct, but their role in this process.

First, even as a parolee, police cannot enter a person's residence without a warrant and without permission to enter.

Second, the police accused the family of violating a Section 8 rule but the family's situation was obviously more complicated than that. Frankly it is not the police's authority to enforce Section 8 rules which are federal. Moreover, by inserting themselves into the process they probably overstepped their boundaries.

Unexplained in this story is the fact that obviously there was no evidence that Mr. Coleman threatened anyone, otherwise they could have simply arrested him and revoked his parole.

Even if the authorities in Antioch technically acted appropriate here, a questionable contention at best, their insertion into this process is part of the problem. Instead of calming the situation down, they seem to be throwing fuel on the fire.

This is part of the problem I had with the Police Chief while he was in Davis. Two years ago, I obtained public records that show that Chief Hyde in response to citizen complaints about police conduct and in response to the HRC pressing the issue, instead of diffusing the situation, launched a PR campaign against the HRC from the police station. Emails show efforts by the police chief to drum up opposition to the HRC. Emails show derogatory statements made by the police chief to the HRC, its chair, and others in this community. While the Chief perhaps had every right to mobilize a counter response to the HRC's complaints, the method in which it was undertaken was polarizing and increased the heat and the tensions.

Moreover the police chief chose to finally take a new position in Antioch, a move he had been looking to make for some time, long before disagreements with the HRC arose. He chose that opportunity to throw the final fuel to the fire, further inciting tensions as he left the scene and forced those who stayed in Davis to clean up his mess including a number of lawsuits that the city currently faces from actions, which took place under his command.

These patterns seem to be reemerging in Antioch. Thus far, it seems that the police chief has the backing of the Antioch Mayor and City Council who also gave him a raise this month. The next question will be how much teeth this lawsuit has and whether the findings by the court, which figures to be a long and drawn out process, will vindicate or indict his current practices.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Former Davis Police Chief Finds New Department Subject of Federal Class Action Lawsuit

Police Allegedly Targeting African-American Tenants in Antioch

According to a lawsuit filed by Antioch Community Members and four Bay Area non-profit civil rights organizations, the City of Antioch and its police department are engaged in a concerted campaign of intimidation, harassment and discrimination against citizens, specifically African-American residents, who receive federally funded Section 8 housing rent assistance.

This is the apparent culmination of a long and controversial dispute in Antioch between longer term residents and those who have moved their families to Antioch in search of more affordable housing.

The city of Antioch rejected the lawsuit's claims, arguing that

"any objective review of our city's policing efforts will reveal that these efforts are focused exclusively on criminal and/or dangerous behavior."

However, according to Brad Seligman of the Impact Fund, one of the four groups to file the lawsuit on behalf of community members in Antioch:

“There is no question that the City and its police department are targeting Section 8 families, particularly African American recipients... The Police have a deliberate policy of coercion, intimidation and threats that target these Section 8 families and their landlords. The City’s goal is to force these families to move out of town.”

According to a release from the ACLU:

Plaintiff Alyce Payne moved to Antioch with her children to show her family they could “make it” outside of Oakland and so that her children could attend public schools there. But after her landlord received several letters from the police department, her tenancy was terminated. Ms. Payne relocated her family out of the City.

“Everyone should have the right to live in peace in the community they choose,” said Payne, who testified before the Antioch City Council about the discrimination she encountered from police officers. “We all want to live in a place where our families and our rights are respected.”

The suit alleges among other things that the Antioch Police Deparment:

- Established a special unit in 2006, the Community Action Team (CAT) for the purpose of targeting Section 8 residents, and the unit has directed the majority of its activities at African American families.

- Frequently searches the homes of African American families in the Section 8 program (or those erroneously believed to participate in the program) without their consent and without a warrant in an attempt to gather evidence to be used against Section 8 participants.

- Engages in a pattern of informing neighbors of African-American Section 8 households that the household is receiving Section 8 housing assistance and suggesting that neighbors file nuisance or disturbance reports against the Section 8 household.

- Threatens landlords with letters and visits by suggesting that landlords will be held liable for the activities of Section 8 tenants, and police officers actively encourage landlords to evict Section 8 tenants.

- Attempts to pressure the local Housing Authority in charge of the Section 8 program to terminate the voucher benefits of tenants whom the police department has targeted. Over 70% of these attempts have been directed at African Americans. A majority of these complaints were not sustained by the Housing Authority.

According to the complaint filed, in July of 2006, the City and the Antioch Police Department created a unit called the "Community Action Team" or "CAT" within the department. The CAT has disproportionately focused on Section 8 voucher participants, particularly on those residing in the more affluent neighborhoods of Antioch. "The city and APD [Antioch Police Department] have specifically targeted African-Americans they believe hold Section 8 vouchers."

During this time, former Davis Police Chief Jim Hyde had become Chief of Police for the City of Antioch. While these processes were underway, he was clearly in the position to facilitate the program, and in addition "he is responsible for the administration of APD and the training and supervision of its officers." Furthermore, "Defendant City, APD and Police Chief Hyde are, and at all times material to this complaint were, responsible for the employment, training, supervision, and discipline" of three named officers.

Former Davis Police Chief Jim Hyde remains the subject of another federal lawsuit, this one stemming from the 2005 arrest of then-16 year old Halema Buzayan stemming from a disputed hit-and-run accident in a Safeway parking lot and allegations of unlawful arrest, poor police procedures, and violations of Miranda Rights. A judge in April of 2006 dismissed the charges against Ms. Buzayan. The Buzayan federal lawsuit is moving slowly through the court process, having survived efforts from multiple defendants to drop the complaint.

When Police Chief Jim Hyde resigned from the city of Davis, the city was rife with turmoil and complaints against the police department. The Buzayan case was the most publicized and notable. However, in February of 2006, a large number of African-American students and faculty, came before the Davis City Council to complain about racial profiling. In May of the same year, several hundred mostly African-American students marched from the Memorial Union on campus to the Davis Police Department.

While it was the efforts of the Human Relations Commission and my wife Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald, in pushing for police oversight and reform, that earned widespread media attention and criticism by many suggesting they had gone too far in their demands, it was the anger of these separate groups that contributed to an overall sense that the police department under Jim Hyde's leadership was under siege.

In June, following the 2006 elections, Jim Hyde abruptly resigned from his position at the Davis Police Department to take the same position for more pay in the City of Antioch.

As he left, he threw more fuel on the fire, blaming my wife, Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald, and the HRC.

"In my 27 years of government service, 10 years of clinical psychology and 16 years of working with nonprofit organizations, the HRC is the most dysfunctional and incestuous group I have ever witnessed. I hope that (the) City Council will correct this community problem."

The Davis City Council would act quickly before newly elected Councilmember Lamar Heystek, a strong ally of the HRC and supporter of reform, could be seated. On June 26, 2006, the Davis City Council voted by a 4-1 margin to disband the Human Relations Commission.

To be very honest, this blog would likely not exist had it not been for the events in the Spring of 2006 and the actions by Chief Jim Hyde that led the HRC being disbanded.

Even two years later on the campaign trail, I ran into a number of individuals who still hold anger for the fact that Chief Jim Hyde was perceived to have been run off by Cecilia and the HRC.

And yet at the same time, it seems to me that Chief Jim Hyde was a huge precipitator of both the underlying problems in the Davis Police Department as well as an instigator to many of the tensions that arose in the Spring of 2006. When he left, overnight, tension plummeted. Even more than the hiring of a police ombudsman, the hiring of Chief Landy Black in the spring of 2007 served to cut down on the public complaints. I am not suggesting that things are perfect, I still think things could be better, but we have also not had public marches in the streets the last two years. We have not had hundreds of young African-American students coming into city council complaining about police tactics. In my dealings with Chief Black, he has always been willing to listen and has been completely professional, even on those occasions when we have disagreed.

As Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald said to Davis Enterprise reporter Claire St. John during her run for City Council in a Davis Enterprise article:

"I think we all learned from that process," she said. "How communications, situations, can be improved. It's those experiences that make us better people."

Escamilla-Greenwald said the things that came of that time have improved the city. The City Council, although it rejected an independent police oversight commission, did appoint a police advisory commission and hired an ombudsman. The new police chief, Landy Black, is a good fit for the city, Escamilla-Greenwald said.

"We have a new chief of police who is doing a great job as far as I've seen," she said. "I've met with him, I did a ride-along with the police, that was an eye-opener. People are happy, from what I hear. There's now a process in place."

While the situation in Antioch may be somewhat different from that in Davis, the basic scenario seems to follow a similar pattern. The police are alleged to take an overly broad approach to law enforcement. It is unclear the extent to which Section 8 Voucher recipients are being perceived to be causing problems or if they are actually causing those problems. But irrespective of that point, the response by the police in Antioch seems to be to allegedly harass all African-Americans, regardless of their Section 8 status. This is the heart of the racial-profiling allegation.

What we see then is a pattern of behavior not only in terms of police profiling, or perceptions thereof, but in terms of the handling of the matter.

Throughout the Buzayan case, a more honest and forthright approach really could have avoided many of the lawsuits and legal remedies that ultimately resulted.

The acrimony between the police and the HRC did not necessarily have to result from events.

As Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald wrote in 2006 in response to Jim Hyde's parting words:

"After many months of hearing from members of the public, last summer we met with the police chief over concerns about the growing number of complaints about police misconduct. These meetings and interactions quickly turned adversarial as the police chief became defensive. Instead of engaging in public dialogue over these very serious issues, Chief Hyde retreated--he cut off communications with the HRC, he pulled his liaisons to the commission, and began a concerted public campaign to discredit the efforts of the HRC to reach common ground on reforms that could be done within the department."

Furthermore:

"The Human Relations Commission, after hearing repeated accounts from credible citizens in our community, recommended the formation of a Citizen's Review Board of the police department. The Police Chief reacted negatively and with attacks upon the HRC as well myself and members of the community for even suggesting such a body. Once again, Chief Hyde reacted defensively and inappropriately instead of working with the community to resolve these problems."

The situation could have been diffused, perhaps by both sides. The City Council could have approached this by simply acknowledging a potential problem but suggesting that the civilian oversight board would be problematic in Davis. Instead the city endured attacks and allegations and heated rhetoric. No doubt everyone involved could have handled things better.

But we what see now is a pattern. That pattern has repeated itself in Antioch, far away from Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald, the HRC or even the Vanguard.

At the same time, the response from the Antioch City Council is eerily similar to that in Davis.

Former Councilmember Ted Puntillo at the time of Hyde resignation called Hyde

"a very talented and probably one of the best chiefs that we could ever hope to have."

On Wednesday, the Contra Costa Times reports similar comments from the Mayor of Antioch as well as City Councilmembers.

On Tuesday, the Antioch City Council approved a nearly $17,000 per year raise for the Police Chief.

Antioch Mayor Donald Freitas:

"The salary increase has more to do with salary compaction but it also reflects an endorsement of Chief Hyde and the outstanding job he's doing. He has performed exemplary in the last two years, and has moved the department into the 21st century with the use of new technology. He's well-respected by the men and women under his command, as well as the community."

Councilmember Arne Simonsen:

"I'm sure there are other cities that would like a police chief like Jim Hyde... but I think the majority of people in Antioch would like him to stay."

I think the Davis Police Department is far better without Chief Jim Hyde here. Much work remains to be done, but so far, Landy Black's tenure as Police Chief has gone off without major incident. The city has been relatively calm since the departure of Jim Hyde. That and subsequent law suits in Antioch simply cannot be mere coincidence.

The Vanguard will continue to monitor the situation in Antioch and in the coming weeks, we will be speaking with some of the attorneys involved in the lawsuit down there and also possibly updating the public on the ongoing Buzayan Federal Lawsuit that is currently working its way through the Federal Court in Sacramento.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Sunday Morning Musings: Anonymous Emails and City Council Coverage

This has been a busy week and there are two little odds and ends that I wanted to cover.

Anonymous Emails

Whoever invented the concept of anonymous emails, it certainly makes life more entertaining for a blogger. If people realized how many emails I get every week with tips about news stories I need to follow up, they would be amazed. Sometimes I am. And frankly there are a lot of potentially interesting stories that simply have not been followed up on not due to lack of interest but lack of time.

However, there are also some that I would love to follow up on, but they give me very little to go on. I do not know if people simply do not understand what information is needed in order to do sufficient follow up.

What else is very interesting is that I was talking yesterday to a campaign manager and that campaign manager had received a phone call with a tip to follow up on, but it was so vague, all the campaign manager could have done would have been to ask random people about the incident.

I bring this up, because on Friday I got about three very interesting tips and none of them had enough information to even start to follow up. One of them communicated a four year old incident involving an individual accused of vandalism and property destruction in which the police were called. They do not tell me who the victim was only who the perpetrator was. Without the victim, I cannot even start an inquiry. Police records do not tend to be public records. Incident reports are not kept long. And if the case does not go to trial and I doubt this one has, there is little in the way of a records trail.

That means unless I get a name, I cannot find out any information about the case. And because the individual who emailed me, did so anonymously, I cannot even follow up on it. A few times on such tips, I have gotten lucky and stumbled onto something, but for the most part, if you want me to actually do follow up, you have to give me something to go on.

Davis Enterprise Article

I commend the Davis Enterprise and reporter Claire St. John on a good series of articles on the city council candidates. I do not think the Enterprise has done enough frankly in terms of coverage of the campaign--which is unfortunate for the community. That is one reason I have gotten up at 4 am twice this week to transcribe recordings of the candidates forum to bring to the public. It is a lot of work and quite time consuming as anyone who has done transcription knows.

I did want to comment on one of the Enterprise articles that specifically mentions the Vanguard. Of course it is the one about my wife, Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald. And overall I think it was a very good and fair article, but I think towards the end it goes from reporting to editorializing.

And I should state, I emphasize this because I find it amusing. I have very thick skin these days...

"Around the time the Human Relations Commission was disbanded, Escamilla-Greenwald's husband, David Greenwald, started a blog. Called the People's Vanguard of Davis, it focuses on 'the dark underbelly of Davis,' according to the site, with daily posts taking a decidedly conspiracy-theorist bent. "

The depiction of the blog as "conspiracy-theorist" caught my attention, it sounded like something more out of the X-Files than what the blog actually does. I do not think there is some grand conspiracy in the city of Davis, other than to perhaps not sufficiently cover public affairs.

The Enterprise article also rehashed the police issue, the HRC, and Chief Hyde's exit. And that's fair, it is part of the public record. And I think the article put the comments made by departing Police Chief Jim Hyde into good context.

I want to thank the Enterprise for finally clarifying that it was indeed the Buzayan case that forced the Chief to quit. They have put his famous quote about the Commission into that context, where it properly should be. It exposes the quote as a clear and obvious attempt to divert the public's attention. Hyde wanted to shift public attention from the real message--that he had mishandled the Buzayan case and public criticism, and in so doing had exposed the City to millions in damages--to the messenger--a properly outraged Commission of citizens for which its chairwoman, Cecilia, was properly speaking.

Second, I appreciate that the Enterprise article mentions that the Vanguard tries to report political events in a balanced way.

"Greenwald initially wrote that he wouldn't be writing about the City Council election since his wife is running, but he relented and tries to cover events in a balanced way, disclosing that he is Escamilla-Greenwald's husband."

That is exactly what the Vanguard will continue to do. In fact, the Vanguard, recognizing its unique relationship to one candidate, has since changing the policy had a standing, open invitation to any other candidate to submit comments about anything they want, and the Vanguard will post these comments unedited. This was conveyed personally and by email. To date, no one has taken the Vanguard up on its offer.

The article mentions recent criticism of Don Saylor. In fact, the Vanguard has been critical of several Council members about various issues, not just Mr Saylor, but as the Enterprise has seen fit to single out a Vanguard critique of this one candidate, the Vanguard reiterates its policy and invites Mr. Ssaylor to post his own response as he sees fit.

The Vanguard will continue to provide the city of Davis as well as the region with the best electoral coverage of the City Council, County Supervisor and 8th Assembly Race, in the area.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

2007 Year in Review--10 Biggest Vanguard Stories of 2007

As the first full year of the People's Vanguard of Davis comes to completion, we will countdown the top 10 stories from this year. This is the second year we have done this.

Last year we counted down the 10 Biggest Stories in Davis.

This year we countdown the 10 biggest stories that we followed on the People's Vanguard of Davis.

We begin with the 10th biggest story: The Davis City Council Preserves the City's Historic Anti-Discrimination Ordinance.

This story begins actually in October of 2006. The City of Davis had just reformulated the Human Relations Commission after putting it on "hiatus" in late June of 2006. During the course of reconstituting the commission, the Davis City Council sought to re-write the authorizing resolution in order to strip some of the powers of the commission.

However, it was not until then newly elected Councilmember Lamar Heystek brought forward the language from the city's seminal anti-discrimination ordinance, that the council realized there may be inconsistencies between the new authorizing resolution of the HRC and the city's anti-discrimination ordinance passed in 1986.

The Davis Enterprise in October of 2006 reports:

"[T]he commission has been charged with reviewing the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance, created in 1986. [HRC Chair John] Dixon appointed a subcommittee to look at the ordinance to see if any changes are necessary."

When the current Davis City Council reformulated the Davis Human Relations Commission, they sought to strip much of the previous power that they once had. As a result, they passed a resolution making the HRC strictly an advisory body, without the ability to investigate complaints.

This directly contradicted the Section 7A-15(C) of the City's Anti-Discrimination Code:

"Any person who believes he or she has been discriminated against in violation of the provisions of this ordinance may file a request to have the Human Relations Commission investigate and mediate his or her complaint. The Commission may adopt rules of procedure to accommodate the needs of such investigation mediation. A complaint to the Commission shall not be a prerequisite to filing a civil action under this section, and the findings and conclusions of the commission issued in response to such proceedings shall not be admissible in a civil action."

Councilmember Stephen Souza (a former chair of the HRC himself) was caught completely unaware of this section of the city's Anti-discrimination Ordinance. The question was whether the city council should alter the anti-discrimination ordinance adopted into law by the City Council on February 26, 1986 and approved by Nichols-Poulos, Rosenberg, Tomasi and Mayor Ann M. Evans and opposed by Jerry Adler.

The council in February by a 3-2 contentious vote (Mayor Sue Greenwald and Councilmember Lamar Heystek) authorize the subcommittee of Councilmember Steve Souza and Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Asmundson to address this issue and make a recommendation to the full council.

The issue finally came before the Davis City Council in June of 2007. Councilmember Souza and Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Asmundson come before the council with a subcommittee report.

The report concludes:

“The subcommittee recommends that Section 7A-15(c) of the city’s Anti-discrimination Ordinance should be deleted.”

Furthermore, they argue that this is not a fundamental problem for civil rights enforcement:

“The Subcommittee believes there is an adequate web of resources available to individuals.”

At the time, it appeared the vote was a mere formality. However, neither the city nor the subcommittee seemed to be very prepared in their presentations or their material. Much of the recommendations were last minute. And indeed neither the council nor city staff appeared to have much knowledge of the historic role of the commission as a body that does informal rather than formal investigations.

Assistant City Manager Kelly Stachowicz was charged with presenting the staff report.

“That particular resolution, one of the things that it did was attempted to remove the responsibility from the Human Relations Commission to investigate individual grievances with the intent of attempting to adjudicate them primarily because that particular responsibility is problematic in a public commission…”

Ms. Stachowicz specifically referred to the Commission's lack of subpoena power and lack of ability to get all information as a reason to strip its power to investigate and mediate.

The first of many twists of this night came when Souza suddenly announced that they had changed their proposal, which first sought to delete the authorizing section from the ordinance and instead would edit it to shift the power from the HRC to the city and city manager.

“Section 7A-15(c) which is civil remedies under the anti-discrimination ordinance, speaks to a specific commission as the entity that would mediate and investigate, what we have done is change that language to not be specific and allow for the evolving nature of the city’s mediation ability and programs over time.”

Souza spoke of replacing the power of the HRC with that of existing organizations. The argument that he used was that the city now possesses resources that it did not have at its disposal in 1986 such as the mediation and fair housing program, the police advisory committee, the ombudsman, the personnel board, and the human resources department. He argued that only one of them has subpoena power, the personnel board. In order to do a proper investigation, a body must be able to compel individuals to come forward to testify, only the personnel board has that power, not the HRC, he stated.

Councilmember Lamar Heystek took strong disagreement with both the process by which this was brought forward and some of the specific proposals.

Councilmember Heystek pointedly asked:

“We received this amendment to the ordinance shortly before 6:30, why was this not included in our council packet when it was delivered to our homes?”

Councilmember Souza responded:

“Because we prepared it a half hour before the meeting. We thought about it over the weekend, and me and Ruth discussed it, then we came and met with Kelly [Stachowicz] at 5:30 and proposed the language that you see before you.”

Heystek continued to press his point:

“I certainly appreciate that you’ve done that, but I question whether or not we’ve given people, even here, who wish to speak who were not prepared for these changes, and perhaps people at home who haven’t had these changes presented to them, I think the council should be very eager to take public comment tonight, but I question whether or not we should take action tonight.”

He also questioned the relevance of the personnel board as an investigative body for civil rights complaints.

Souza responded:

“It’s the appropriate body where individuals in the city lodge complaints against individuals in the city”

City Attorney Harriet Steiner had to step in here:

“The personnel board is there so that if there is a personnel action against a city employee, if there is a complaint against a city employee… that is the hearing body on whether the employee should appropriately be disciplined for their conduct. That board is set up as an adjudicatory board, but that board is not a board where people come in and lodge a complaint against a city employee…”

Heystek:

“That was my understanding of the role of the personnel board, so I will ask the subcommittee what relevance does the personnel board have to what we are dealing with tonight, changes to this civil rights ordinance, why do you bring up the personnel board if it is not otherwise a body that is open to the public?”

Souza:

“If there is a discrimination complaint against an individual in the city from an employee of the city, that would be the vehicle that they use to adjudicate the issue.”

Souza also admitted in response to a question from Heystek that he had only read the minutes of the deliberations on the original ordinance from 1986 “this evening.”

Councilmember Heystek pressed City Manager Bill Emlen as to where he would be providing referrals to investigate or mediate the complaint of individuals. Emlen in fact had no idea and dodged Heystek’s question twice. First, stating it would depend on the nature of the complaint. And second stating, “I think they’ve been mentioned this evening the various options that are available.” Both of these were essentially dodges and non-answers.

Then came a key exchange between City Attorney Harriet Steiner and Councilmember Souza.

Councilmember Souza:

“Do we have to do anything in order to keep the ordinance legal in its intent and the resolution in the Human Relations Commission? Can we leave it as it is?”

City Manager Steiner:

“I think we probably could leave it as it is.”

Councilmember Souza:

“Does any city commission, in particular the Human Relations Commission, have the ability under law to investigate?”

City Manager Steiner:

“None of our commissions would actually provide what lawyers think of as a non-biased investigation, none of the commissions with the possible exception of the personnel board that we talked about before, really are set up to do an equivalent to what the courts do. Many of our commissions listen to the citizens, provide forums for issues, and come to a policy recommendation to the city council with an appropriate recommendation…”

The discussion turned on the meaning of the term adjudicate. Council seemed largely unaware that the commission had never performed nor sought adjudicatory power. Their power was in the ability to bring sides together to mediate--if both sides were willing.

During this discussion, Mayor Pro Tem Asmundson and Councilmember Stephen Souza conferred with each other and Ms. Asmundson stated that there was an announcement from the subcommittee.

Councilmember Souza stated:

“I would suggest, given the first answer to the question about whether we could just leave the ordinance as is, that I would move that we leave the ordinance as is, and that we direct the liaison to the Human Relations Commission to explain the other avenues that are available and clarify the meaning, and provide the information as to the avenues that are available for mediation and complaints.”

Suddenly by a 5-0 vote, the city council left the anti-discrimination ordinance unchanged and restored the power of the HRC to its previous levels.

It was a bizarre turn of events and the most unexpected ending.

The discussion spawned a few commentaries from the Vanguard.

First, a youtube clip of some of the deliberation.

Second, a general commentary on the degree to which the council and staff appeared unprepared.

All of this makes the city's preservation of the anti-discrimination ordinance, the 10th biggest story of 2007.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

School Climate Report

Last night at the city of Davis' Human Relations Commission, Mel Lewis, the Davis School District's Climate Coordinator with assistance from Pam Mari, Director of Student Services presented a brief overview of the results from the Yale School Climate Survey.

For those of you who are long time Vanguard readers, you will recall back in May, we were critical of the use of this survey for the purposes ascertaining school climate. There were four versions of this survey: Elementary and Middle School, High School, Parent, and Staff. Last May we were able to obtain the Parent version and post it on the Vanguard. Mr. Lewis informed us that the results of this survey are proprietary, and therefore they cannot post the results of the survey. This is basically a $30,000 survey purchased at public expense that cannot have the full results posted--a problematic aspect to begin with.

They were able to show us summary and graphical results.

There were 17 major categories of questions. The first graphic to the right shows the 17 categories and their distribution within the surveys. The first six are incorporated into the Elementary and Middle School Survey. Categories 2 through 7 are incorporated into the High School Category.

The big findings are represented on the second and third graphic. These pictorially demonstrate a consistent pattern that on most questions, "Black" and "Latino" students rate their school climate less than their "White" counterparts.

To Mel Lewis, this was clear and convincing evidence that the school climate was not perceived the same for all students and it was systematically more difficult for minorities than for white students, according to this survey.

Mr. Lewis stressed that this data will allow us to move away from assumptions to reality. In other words, we do not have to assume that these problems are here, we have evidence and we can now deal with them. As a result, we can improve communication and awareness. And this will help in the formation of various programs that we have discussed such as the Safe School Ambassadors program, the Unconscious Bias Training, among others.

One of the questions that had among the lowest ratings was the question: "I can talk to my teachers about my problems." Overall, only 42 percent of students agreed, that number dropped to 6 percent among black students at one Junior High, 15 percent at another.

Before I proceed with this, I want to stress, that to me Mel Lewis and Pam Mari are very sincere on this issue. They have concerns and I think they are sincere in wanting to address these concerns.

Nevertheless, even though I am sympathetic to the results of this survey, I remain troubled by some of the interpretations of the findings.

First, as a social scientist, I question the interpretation of the results. There is a consistent pattern that shows a difference between minority and white respondents across the board. However, without having the actual figures those differences appear small numerically. Furthermore, given the low sample size for minorities, I am not certain how robust these results are and how confident we can be that these differences are not due to mere chance and random variations.

Let me give a clear and simple example. Let us suppose that there were only 10 black students at a school and 7 told us that they did not feel they could talk to their teachers. That, would be 70% percent. A one student difference in the results would drastically change the results. If one extra student said they felt they could talk to their teachers, the number would drop to 60% or if one fewer student said they could not talk to their teachers, that number would rise to 80%. In other words, one random change in the responses could swing the results by 20%. Even if you have 19 students, as was the case in one of the surveys at a Junior High, small random variation can lead to drastic change in results. Are the differences in the results between whites and non-whites, large enough to overcome the potential for random variation? If they are, they are what we would call statistically significant. If not, then they are not. From the results that we see, it is difficult to tell if they are.

So again, while I might believe the results, I have difficulty having confidence in the process.

Secondly, while I think the results are instructive, I am still far from sure that they asked the key questions. As I was skeptical in May, there were few questions that I would consider actual climate type questions. Few that asked about racism. Few that asked about race relations. Few that talked about harassment, discrimination, differentials in punishment, bullying, etc. The key issues that we have faced over the past few years are not covered by the survey. So yes, we may have stumbled onto some results here, but we might still not be asking the critical questions that will really show us where the problems lie.

Finally, as several told me following the meeting, it is far from clear that the questions asked here are much different from what was found nearly 20 years ago. We do not necessarily need more surveys. We have had surveys. We have developed programs. What we have not done is follow through on these programs with any type of commitment. In May, we talked about the "Racial Climate Assessment Report" that was done nearly 20 years ago and yet could have been written today.

Long time activist Tansey Thomas asked the school district in May:

“I don’t know why we want to start over again, everything that was a problem then, is a problem now. It’s like we’ve gone nowhere… That we form another study group, start another cycle, and it goes nowhere.”

As one person said last night, we've studied this enough, time for action.

The key question is whether these programs will solve the problem and whether the new board and the new superintendent will have the tenacity to follow through with these reports and implement these programs and ensure that programs will do what we are saying they will do. Short of that, we are engaging in academic exercises for no apparent benefit.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: A One-Year Review of Police Oversight in Davis

One year ago from August 24, 2006 to August 30, 2006, the fledgling Vanguard in the wake of the then Davis City Council majority of Asumundson, Puntillo, Saylor and Souza voting to put the Human Relations Commission on hiatus ran a seven-part series examining the Davis Police Oversight System. Within a month or two, the city of Davis would hire Bob Aaronson as the police ombudsman for the City of Davis. Last week, the Vanguard interviewed Mr. Aaronson and discussed his first year on the job. Today the Vanguard will discuss a number of police oversight issues and make him regret putting his thoughts on the record (just kidding).

My initial response to the proposed oversight system now in place was strong opposition. There were three reasons for that primarily. First, there was no public component to it--there was no place where an individual could make a complaint in public and receive a public redress of their grievance. Second, the Ombudsman position itself was fairly weak--it was a part-time position, the Ombudsman acted basically as an auditor who reviewed completed investigations if the individual making a complaint was not satisfied. Finally and probably most pointedly, I failed to trust the council to produce a system that would work given their misgivings about and opposition to the need for oversight to begin with.

I will begin with the last point. The other points will be evaluated as I look back over the recommendations I made on August 30, 2006.

To be quite frank, one of the reasons I never trusted the council to create an oversight system that worked is that the very first meeting that I ever saw from them (January 17, 2006), Councilmembers Don Saylor and Ted Puntillo spent their time attempting to demonstrate how unnecessary police oversight in Davis was.

That statement was summarized by this quote by Ted Puntillo:

"What I want are police officers out there that are using their training and their instincts, I don’t want them thinking about oh somebody’s going to be reviewing what I’m doing. "

Don Saylor stated that they had "thoroughly reviewed the complaints against the city and found them totally without merit." This was a stunning statement given it did not seem likely they conducted their own investigation of these complaints. Puntillo then added that this would be "an eye-opener for many in the city."

Up until the point at which these statements were made I have lived in the city of Davis for nearly nine and a half years and had never been involved in city politics. By the time this little scene was done, my life would be unalterably changed. And let me tell you, Ted Puntillo was right, it was an eye-opener for me to hear elected public officials make these sorts of blatantly irresponsible statements.

A few weeks later, on February 21, 2006, then-Police Chief Jim Hyde and Councilmember Don Saylor went through a series of statistics to demonstrate to the public how low the number of sustained complaints were in the city of Davis. Basically what Jim Hyde told Councilmember Saylor was that there were 74 citizen complaints from 2003 to 2005 and of those only 5 were sustained.

Statistics are given a bad rap because most people do not understand how to properly analyze them. This leads to the assumption by many that statistics can be used to say whatever you want them to say. This is patently untrue however. One needs to be able to interpret statistics properly. To his credit, Councilmember Saylor on that date did ask the correct question--asking Chief Hyde how these numbers compare to other communities. However, Chief Hyde dodged this question by stating that communities vary and therefore are difficult to compare. And Saylor never pressed him on the issue when he clearly should have. Had he pressed him, he would have found out that the number of sustained complaints was right around the national average whereby less than 10 percent of all complaints are sustained by the Internal Review Process and in fact, Davis had a higher number than a lot of other jurisdictions.

Ombudsman Bob Aaronson when asked as to whether Davis was in need of an independent oversight system said:

"I’m someone who believes that every law enforcement organization ought to have some form of oversight. I’ve worked with a lot of organizations around the state and to me it’s not a critique of law enforcement it has to do with the fact that in absence of oversight not everyone is going to be squared away."

I still believe that a good police oversight system benefits rather than harms the interests of police officers. It fosters trust that they are doing their jobs the proper way and also provides an outlet for those who are dissatisfied with the handling of their encounter with a police officer. Often that dissatisfaction stems from misunderstanding about the law and an individual's right under the law. By having someone who is independent of the police be in the position and have the authority to explain to an individual that the incident was handled properly, it allows for those who would otherwise distrust the police to be educated about proper procedure.

Getting back however to my original trepidations--the point of this demonstration is to show why I was skeptical of this city council, who had pointedly and deliberately argued that we do not need police oversight, would then be able to turn around and create a police oversight model that would work. They never laid out the case for oversight as Mr. Aaronson did. They took oversight to be a criticism of all police because it arose from specific complaints against the police rather than a means by which to foster community trust in the police.

The jury is still out on that bottom line however. As a whole, I think Bob Aaronson was a good hire. In the comments to the interview last week, some complained he was probably too cautious with his assessment. I would tend to agree with that viewpoint. He has made it a point to protect his political capital until the big case comes forward. While I can understand that desire, I think there are enough data to really look into past practices so that we can come to terms with them and correct them for the future.

At the same time, we have not seen the big case yet either. My biggest problem has been the lack of willingness of those in the community with what appear to be valid complaints that are worthy of investigation (it may turn out that the investigation would clear the officer of wrongdoing, but investigation is still needed) are not willing to come forward. These people are often unwilling to come forward. Part of the reason for that is that they are afraid to. In part, they saw what happened to Buzayans and decided it just was not worth it. That has been a source of much frustration personally.

One of the big questions is that of racial profiling and whether it occurs in the department.

When asked in a California Aggie article if there is "racism within the Davis Police Department," Chief Landy Black who had been in the department for two months at the time responded:

"It's absolutely untrue. I think there was a great deal of political influence in what was going on. There was a need from some people for [their own] publicity, and with the current climate of policing, it gets you notoriety to claim racist policing."

While that was perhaps not the best way to ask the question, I am still uncertain as to how the Chief could know this that soon. Nevertheless, I am not altogether convinced that racial profiling equals racism rather than poor policing technique or even laziness.

During the course of this year I asked the same question of both Former UC Davis Police Chief Calvin Handy who also serves on both the PAC (Police Advisory Commission) and the CAB (Community Advisory Board) and the Ombudsman Bob Aaronson.

When I asked Calvin Handy here was his response:

"My first act as [UC Davis] police chief here was to meet with large groups, students, staff, and faculty, and they had this consistent belief that racial profiling was happening in the city of Davis... After 12 years it is kind of amazing given how much we engaged in the process that people are saying the same thing. This problem has just gone on for too long and too pervasive."

Last week Bob Aaronson said something remarkably similar:

"I have not seen first hand evidence of it. Where I have seen documents or I have seen incidents first hand that would allow me to establish that that occurred. On the other hand, there have been enough complaints by people of color that I’m not prepared to say it’s not an issue. As well there is some statistical information that I don’t know enough about to know whether it’s credible and if it is credible what it’s really saying. But clearly there is something there that requires more attention."

Part of the problem that I have had is how would you even go about proving racial profiling? It is a difficult problem to address.

In response to my evaluation last year of the Police Oversight system. As I examine it now, there are probably several recommendations that I would no longer make, but there are several that I think are still pretty valid.

First, I believed that it would be difficult to have an Ombudsman without it being a full-time position. From my discussions with Bob Aaronson, I believe that more than ever.

Aaronson's response here makes a lot of sense--that it is a matter of balancing priorities:

"Clearly I would like to have more time to spend in Davis doing more active outreach to the community and also doing more ridealongs. But the challenge for a place like Davis—because the implication and the question is ‘what instead’ or ‘in addition to’—the challenge for a community like Davis, and it’s the reason why I came here, most oversight models are geared toward far larger jurisdictions and larger departments. I have a hard time arguing that a jurisdiction the size of Davis ought to be spending a quarter of a million dollars on oversight. I have a hard time arguing that. I could see spending a couple of million dollars on oversight or more for the city of San Jose. But smaller oversight, no one is really trying to figure out a way to do that and so my work here and my work in Santa Cruz also are efforts to explore is there a cost effective way to use some of the oversight tools in a smaller jurisdiction."

It is worth noting that Councilmember Stephen Souza keeps trying to expand the role of the ombudsman to cover the entire city, a notion he first brought up in February of 2006, a notion he mentioned again in March of 2007 and a notion he most recently mentioned in conjunction with a proposal to remove the investigation authority from the Human Relations Commission. I do not see how this is a possibility without hiring a full-time ombudsman with a professional staff.

Second, I recommended that the Ombudsman be given a stronger role in the initial oversight. As this system has developed, it has changed structurally even though it has not changed on paper. What seems to have happened is that the PAC reviews the Internal Reviews from the Department and that the Ombudsman acts as almost a public liaison who assists and talks to individuals about complaints and helps them if they wish to file a formal complaint.

Third, I suggested using the PAC to replace the Internal Affairs Department.

Bob Aaronson last week suggested basic support for Police Internal Affairs departments:

"In my experience, most internal affairs organizations do a good job 90 to 95 percent of the time on cases. And of the remaining five to ten percent, are not handled the way I’d have them handle them. Not out of malice but out of a lack of training."

I differ from Mr. Aaronson here though I lack his over 20 years of direct experience as an ombudsman. My experience had demonstrated in fact a problem with the internal affairs departments in general. Too many cases are returned as not sustained even when the individuals have valid complaints. One of these cases locally was the Bernita Toney case who complained that a police officer falisified a police report. The internal review process concluded this complaint was not sustained. Yet in a court of law, a jury found that the police report had in fact been falisified when they decided to acquit Ms. Toney of all charges against her. This is but one example. The worse example was the use of the Internal Affairs department to threaten and intimidate Halema Buzayan instead of investigating the complaint against Officer Pheng Ly.

It is interesting to note that Mr. Aaronson commented about Davis Police Sgt. Gina Anderson's, who is now in Citrus Heights, handling of the Buzayan Investigation.

"[B]ased on my explicit training to the Department, they now know that you cannot try to advance a criminal investigation through the investigation of a citizen complaint."

The suggestion here is that this was inadvertent and due to a lack of training. Perhaps. But the effect was to intimidate and threaten a minor who was attempting to file a complaint against the actions of a police officer.

My fourth suggestion was to strengthen the CAB. The CAB is composed of many individuals purportedly from diverse segments of the population, but for the most part only a few of these individuals were critical or skeptical of the police department. It was not until March, that the city finally admitted that this was not part of the oversight process. Nevertheless, it would behoove the new police chief to reconstitute the CAB and place on it more individuals who are critical of the police for the very reason that he would get better feedback from the community if he did so.

Fifth, I suggested improving community outreach. The new police chief seems amenable to that, and some of that is going on. But without specific impetus, I think there are segments of the population that would not be reached. Along the same lines, I suggested improving representation on the boards, make the CAB meetings public. This has not occurred yet.

Finally, I suggested they reinstate the Human Relations Commission. They did this but really stripped this commission of its power and influence. They did at least keep the civil rights ordinance intact, but the HRC is not the body that it was prior to June of 2006. I have spent enough time on this subject, but I think the community really misunderstood what the HRC was aiming to do with police oversight and the valuable function it performed prior to 2006.

In many ways, I do not think either the Ombudsman's job or the Chief's job have started yet. We are still waiting for the "big one." That will occur at some point, it is inevitable no matter how well-intentioned we are, something is going to occur. The question will then become, are we properly equipped to handle things. Overall, I would say that some of my fears about this system have been alleviated. I think we were fortunate to land an individual with the experience of Mr. Aaronson. But as he discovered in Santa Cruz, when you rule against the police there is a heavy price to pay. We have not seen whether anyone can withstand that kind of pressure just yet and that will be the crucial test for this system.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Column: View From West Davis

This is my weekly column of thoughts and tidbits from the week that has passed. A little bit lighter and more playful than the usual serious and hard-hitting coverage.

Flying at Half-Staff

As much as I complain about City Staff doing a poor job in this community, there are some things that just make me scratch my head and blow my hair back.

Such was the case on Thursday Night at the Davis Human Relations Commission Meeting. Last month, a representative from the ACLU had requested the HRC place an item on the agenda to discuss the possibility of recommending to the city council that they pass a resolution to support SB 1019. SB 1019, as the regulars on this blog know, would enable police oversight commissions to conduct their hearings once again in public and report the results of sustained complaints to the public.

The membership of the HRC apparently agreed to the request by the ACLU and placed the item on the agenda for the June Meeting of the HRC on Thursday.

Well I go to the meeting to watch this, and the city staffer Kelly Stachowicz, acknowledges that she has not prepared a staff report for the meeting. She tells the commission some of the basics of the bill but leaves out key details.

I am only a member of the public, so I am not allowed to speak and have to listen for about 20 minutes as the commission goes back and forth with incorrect and incomplete details. Police Chief Landy Black for instance suggests that he doesn't think that Davis needs another layer of oversight.

Well, no one explains to them that this bill has no impact on Davis. All it does is restore local control on the issue, it does not impose any changes on communities that do not already have civilian oversight boards. So it would not impose another layer of oversight on Davis. All it would do, is if Davis in the future wanted a civilian review board, it would allow Davis to report the findings in public.

The ultimate decision made by the commission was that they needed more information. I cannot blame them for that. So they are bringing it back for their July 26, 2007 meeting--which is fine, but it might be moot by then at least for this legislative term as the Assembly Committee is meeting again on July 3.

There were two major problems with this meeting. First, the staffer failed to do a staff report and of course no one on the commission questioned that. Second, in the past, chairs have allowed members of the public with specific knowledge about the issue to speak more informally, but this chair did not. Commissions by design are supposed to be considerably less rigid in structure precisely for this type of scenario.

Moving Left

Two weeks ago in this space, we told you that Davis City Councilmember Don Saylor was heavily promoting the movie "SiCKO" from *Roger* Moore. Well I get word from the health care rally, that Mr. Saylor once again showed up and tried to get his picture taken with everyone holding up a health care sign--people that are not his allies and people that he has attacked in public and private. Must be election time and in Davis that means you move hard to the left to show that you are indeed a liberal.

People just need to remember his voting record while on council. I'm waiting for him to renounce his support for Target, Covell Village, 3rd and B, the lowering of the Anderson Bank Building Windows, his opposition to the HRC and civilian oversight of the police, his refusal to vote on an anti-war resolution, etc. You cannot run from your voting record.

And of course when everyone else was enthusiastically cheering for the speeches, Mr. Saylor was looking rather stoic. You can't fool us.

Outrage

We were at Farmer's Market on Saturday getting the pulse of the town. The pulse of the town is outrage at the proposed development along I-80. It is outrage at the 3rd and B project. And it is outrage at the prospect of water rates tripling over the next decade.

The water issue is particularly pernicious because most people simply have no idea that their rates are going up. The water supply issue is particularly complicated because the people advising the city on the issue have a financial interest in the city constructing a bypass of Sacramento River water.

There is no such confusion on the Stem Cell Research Facility on I-80--no one we met was in favor of it. This is the classic Tskaopoulos approach, he's giving the carrot in the form of the research facility, but the real proposal is housing and commercial development on a massive scale. Other communities have seen right through the scheme, so Yolo is going to fall for it?

This would be DOA if Davis' representatives on the Board of Supervisors were doing their jobs of representing the needs and desires of Davis. Yolo County Supervisors Matt Rexroad and Duane Chamberlain are opposing this. And yet, we may have to fight this because Davis' two county supervisors Mariko Yamada and Helen Thomson favor it. Davis better look long and hard at the next Supervisor for the 4th District this coming election to insure that they will oppose development on the periphery of Davis. It is that simple.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Subcomittee and Staff Look Ill-prepared in Anti-Discrimination Ordinance Deliberations

In many ways this was entirely of their own doing. In April, Councilmember Lamar Heystek pulled a consent agenda item off the consent calendar and moved to allow city staff rather than the city commissions subcommittee of Stephen Souza and Ruth Asmundson look into changes in the anti-discrimination ordinance. At the time, we reported that Councilmember Heystek respectfully but firmly pointed out to the subcommittee that they lacked legal training and moreover they had originally missed the provision. Councilmember Souza's defense was that they were not even aware of the provision in the anti-discrimination ordinance that authorized the HRC to "investigate" and "mediate" charges of discrimination. Heystek responded that proved his point--the council subcommittee had not done their homework and that he lacked confidence in their ability to handle such an important and complex task. Nevertheless, the council voted 3-2 with Heystek joined by Mayor Greenwald in dissent, to authorize the subcommittee to look at the anti-discrimination ordinance.

This criticism would come forth again on Tuesday as the Council subcommittee would come forward with their recommendation first to delete the provision and then to alter it. Without Councilmember Heystek's work, the council would have never been aware of this flaw to begin with as in October of last year, when the council was re-writing the authorizing ordinances and resolutions for all the commissions, neither Souza nor Asmundson had read through the anti-discrimination ordinance. As it turns out, they had not read it in June of 2006 when they shut down the HRC for doing what in retrospect was their job.

In addition to simply not knowing the provision within the anti-discrimination ordinance, there were several other appalling aspects of the subcommittee's work as presented on Tuesday evening. First, somehow between October when the issue first arose and June, and between April when the subcommittee was authorized to look at this question and June, no one asked the city attorney her opinion as to whether the city had to change to ordinance to make it consistent with the resolution. It was her opinion that they did not have to change the ordinance that led Councilmember Souza to withdraw his recommendation for making changes to the ordinance. How could that question not have arisen until there was a public recommendation?

Second, Councilmember Souza and Asmundson made the original recommendation in the council agenda:

“The subcommittee recommends that Section 7A-15(c) of the city’s Anti-discrimination Ordinance should be deleted.”

However, at the meeting it turns out they altered that recommendation without any sort of notice to the public or their colleagues. Instead of deleting that section, they altered it, substituting the HRC for the "city" and "city manager." This change was literally made at 5:30 on Tuesday evening.

Third, Councilmember Souza and Asmundson admitted that they had not read the minutes from the 1986 original deliberations until 6:00 Tuesday evening. In fact, the only reason they saw these minutes at all were that Councilmember Heystek requested of Kelly Stachowicz all the records from the 1986 proceedings and then all the councilmembers received copies of those proceedings. Asmundson claimed that there was no information in them that was useful, but this is simply not true. First, the council voted by a 4-1 margin to approve it. The one dissenting vote was Councilmember Jerry Adler. Mr. Adler at that time made a string of legalistic motions to alter various parts of the ordinance that he thought were problematic. He did not raise one objection however to the section in question. Second, the minutes also contained a list of citizens who at the time spoke in favor of the ordinance, citizens who are still in the community now and are in fact allies of the council majority. It is in fact a veritable "who's who" list of Davis residents.

Fourth, it was not clear from the deliberations that either council or staff understood the wording in the ordinance. It was only when Mayor Greenwald pointed out that the ordinance itself contained the key provision that precluded any findings of the commission's investigation and mediation from being admissible in a court of law, that Harriet Steiner acknowledged that there were in fact distinctions between the legal definition of "investigate" and "mediate" and a more general and common language usage.

The language reads:

"The findings and conclusions of the commission issued in response to such proceedings shall not be admissible in a civil action."

This section in fact indicates and clarifies that when the ordinance speaks of investigate, it does not mean a legal investigation that would have subpoena and more importantly, "adjudicatory" power. Rather, it was meant to be a more informal means of findings out facts and making recommendations to the actual body with legislative authority, the city council.

Fifth, following from this, it was clear that neither staff nor council really understood the history of the commission or its functions. This is especially appalling given that Councilmember Souza was a longtime member and in fact chaired this commission. Bill Ritter, a former chair, told the council that city had a times hired independent investigators to follow up more formally on HRC findings. In fact, as the three former chairs sitting in the audience pointed out, the HRC never had, used, or sought adjudicatory power. The council apparently had little understanding of what the HRC did or how it operated.

This is not surprising in light of the dispute last year, that in my opinion, was largely distorted and blown out of proportions. The council depicted an HRC out of control and bent on subverting the will of council. In fact, what happened was that as a series of complaints against the Davis police arose, the HRC had public meetings to determine the nature of the complaints against the police. They appointed a subcommittee to investigate those complaints led by Jann Murray-Garcia. That subcommittee released their report in February, but by that time the council had already gone another direction in terms how to approach the problem and opted for an Ombudsman rather than Civilian Oversight. The HRC, never took up the issue again formally, although some of their members were involved in pubic protests over the handling of the Buzayan and other cases. None of these actions overstepped the bounds of commission. The council had every right to do as they did and go a different direction, though the tone of the meetings and Councilmember Puntillo's denouncement of their work as "not worth the paper it was written on" was decidedly unprofessional and in poor taste.

Nevertheless, one must in the end question this particular subcommittee, which has seemed to not only fail to perform their duties in an adequate and timely manner with regards to the HRC, but it also badly blundered with another recommendation that in the end they had to withdraw--the recommendation to merge the Senior Citizens Commission with the Social Services commission. (For an overview of that process click here and also here.

The basic facts here are surprisingly similar, but play out over a longer time frame than the anti-discrimination ordinance. The subcommittee issued their initial recommendations for the merger in a consent agenda item and it was only because Councilmember Heystek asked for the item to be brought back later that we discovered that there was a full blown resolution for the merger of the two commissions. Souza would later claim this was brought forward for discussion, but it was not. It was a full blown resolution with a recommendation for merger and it was in a consent agenda item that would not be discussed unless someone pulled it.

When objections to the merger arose, Souza took it to each of the commissions, the Social Services Commission approved it, but the Senior Citizens Commission refused and in fact made a very public complaint about it. At one point, Mr. Souza in fact, berated and attempted to browbeat the chair of that commission, Elaine Roberts Musser, and the rest of the commission, but they would not back down. After a series of very public hearings, included a devastating speech by the chair before the council (see the you tube video of it here), the council not only backed off but attempted to make it appear as though they had not really intended to do anything more than "raise the issue" for the "purposes of discussion."

The historic record of this however does not bear it out and in the end like the anti-discrimination ordinance, the Senior Citizens Commission prevailed when Souza and Asmundson did a hasty reversal in the middle of the proceedings.

What is also interesting is that in both cases, the subcommittee of Souza and Asmundson did the primary work. Councilmember Don Saylor in neither controversy said a whole lot and in fact he did not make a public assertion of his view on either matter and allowed his colleagues and allies to essentially hang themselves.

There has been some controversy about the amount of work done by subcommittees as opposed to the entire body. I am of two-mindsets on the issue because on the one hand, I prefer public deliberations on staff prepared items. On the other hand, I think much of the preparation work can be done outside of formal meetings. What is clear however is that the council should think twice before assigning Stephen Souza and Ruth Asmundson to work together on a subcommittee. They have made two pretty large miscalculations that have in essence wasted both the council's time as well as the community's time. The amount of work that the Senior Citizens Commission and their chair had to do must have been tremendous. Instead of pushing forward with their duties they were forced to fight for their existence.

This process played out in a rather embarrassing way for both city and staff. Frankly both the subcommittee and the staff should be embarrassed at both their lack of knowledge but more importantly their lack of preparation on this item.

I am very grateful that the council did the right thing in the end on this issue, just as they did on the Senior Citizens Commission merger, but that should not excuse the steps that were taken in the interim and especially the lack of preparation and notification to the public.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Council Deliberations on Anti-Discrimination Ordinance

For those who missed the Davis City Council Meeting from Tuesday evening, here are some of the key snippets and exchanges. Included on here are the admissions by Councilmember Stephen Souza that he rewrote the proposal just prior to the city council meeting and that he has only that evening read the minutes from the original discussions. Moreover, you see Souza questioned on the use of the personnel board to lodge complaints against employees. You see Councilmember Heystek question City Manager Bill Emlen on how he would operate under the proposed changes. Finally you see Mayor Sue Greenwald flesh out that the "mediate" and "investigate" mentioned in the ordinance clearly do not refer to those terms in the legal sense since the ordinance explicitly states that these findings are not admissible in the court of law--whereas if the HRC were an investigative body with actual authority to adjudicate, the wording would be more reflective of that.

See for yourself by clicking on the video below...



---Doug Paul Davis reporting

STUNNING REVERSAL BY COUNCIL ON ANTI-DISCRIMINATION ORDINANCE

“Fait accompli,” were the words I used to close my remarks in yesterday’s column to describe the prospects for the proposed changes to the Anti-discrimination Ordinance that would have removed a key passage that empowered the Human Relations Commission to investigate and mediate complaints regarding allegations of discrimination. All went according to plan until about two-thirds of the way through deliberations when one of the members of the subcommittee recommending the changes to the ordinance, Councilmember Stephen Souza, suddenly and unexpectedly moved that there be no changes to the ordinance. The result was a 5-0 vote to make no changes to the ordinance and to basically restore the duties that the Human Relations Commission had previously performed up until June 27, 2006 when the council voted to disband the commission.

Perhaps the most stunning part of the evening was the way that we got to this point, the effectiveness of public testimony, and vigilance on the part of Councilmember Lamar Heystek and Mayor Sue Greenwald in somehow, some way, forcing the council majority to back off. Even more stunning was how woefully unprepared Councilmember Souza and several city staffers were about this meeting and how little either council or staff knew about the actual history of the Commission. This was particularly surprising given the fact that Councilmember Souza was himself a former chair of the Commission.

Assistant City Manager Kelly Stachowicz’s remark actually set the tone for much of the discussion:

“That particular resolution, one of the things that it did was attempted to remove the responsibility from the Human Relations Commission to investigate individual grievances with the intent of attempting to adjudicate them primarily because that particular responsibility is problematic in a public commission…”

Stachowicz specifically referred to the Commission's lack of subpoena power and lack of ability to get all information as a reason to strip its power to investigate and mediate. As we shall see, the interpretation of this language would prove key in the ultimate decision to restore the Commission with this power.

The first of many twists of this night came when Souza suddenly announced that they had changed their proposal, which first sought to delete the authorizing section from the ordinance and instead would edit it to shift the power from the HRC to the city and city manager.

“Section 7A-15(c) which is civil remedies under the anti-discrimination ordinance, speaks to a specific commission as the entity that would mediate and investigate, what we have done is change that language to not be specific and allow for the evolving nature of the city’s mediation ability and programs over time.”

Souza spoke of replacing the power of the HRC with that of existing organizations. The argument that he used was that the city now possesses resources that it did not have at its disposal in 1986 such as the mediation and fair housing program, the police advisory committee, the ombudsman, the personnel board, and the human resources department. He argued that only one of them has subpoena power, the personnel board. In order to do a proper investigation, a body must be able to compel individuals to come forward to testify, only the personnel board has that power, not the HRC, he stated.

Councilmember Lamar Heystek took strong disagreement with both the process by which this was brought forward and some of the specific proposals.

Councilmember Heystek pointedly asked: “We received this amendment to the ordinance shortly before 6:30, why was this not included in our council packet when it was delivered to our homes?”

Souza responded: “Because we prepared it a half hour before the meeting. We thought about it over the weekend, and me and Ruth discussed it, then we came and met with Kelly [Stachowicz] at 5:30 and proposed the language that you see before you.”

Heystek continued to press his point: “I certainly appreciate that you’ve done that, but I question whether or not we’ve given people, even here, who wish to speak who were not prepared for these changes, and perhaps people at home who haven’t had these changes presented to them, I think the council should be very eager to take public comment tonight, but I question whether or not we should take action tonight.”

He also questioned the relevance of the personnel board as an investigative body for civil rights complaints.

Souza responded: “It’s the appropriate body where individuals in the city lodge complaints against individuals in the city”

City Attorney Harriet Steiner had to step in here: “The personnel board is there so that if there is a personnel action against a city employee, if there is a complaint against a city employee… that is the hearing body on whether the employee should appropriately be disciplined for their conduct. That board is set up as an adjudicatory board, but that board is not a board where people come in and lodge a complaint against a city employee…”

Heystek: “That was my understanding of the role of the personnel board, so I will ask the subcommittee what relevance does the personnel board have to what we are dealing with tonight, changes to this civil rights ordinance, why do you bring up the personnel board if it is not otherwise a body that is open to the public?”

Souza: “If there is a discrimination complaint against an individual in the city from an employee of the city, that would be the vehicle that they use to adjudicate the issue.”

Souza also admitted in response to a question from Heystek that he had only read the minutes of the deliberations on the original ordinance from 1986 “this evening.” This appears to be another inexplicable example of Mr. Souza, who had a full nine months to prepare from the time this issue was first raised and a good four or five months since the issue was given back to the council the subcommittee. Why would he only read the minutes of the meeting on the evening of the council action, rather than as a member of the subcommittee as they deliberated on this issue presumably over the prior nine months? This seems inexplicable and utterly contemptible.

Asmundson seemed to attempt to justify this glaring oversight by suggesting:

“The 1986 minutes really doesn’t show us anything, it’s just the action it showed in the minutes, there was no discussion, and we couldn’t find any discussion on that motion.”

Heystek responded, “I respectfully disagree with you on that point.”

Also present at last night’s council meeting were members of the public who played a key role in this as well, with six members speaking, each one of them speaking strongly against the proposed changes to the ordinance.

Michelle Stephens, a current member of the HRC spoke for her out of town colleague Shelly Bailes first. “She was there when the anti-discrimination ordinance was written, and she is opposed to any changes.” And then Ms. Stephens spoke for herself:

“Changing this document would be a mistake, for over 20 years this anti-discrimination ordinance has served our community well, providing proof that the city of Davis is committed to human rights… We should not allow something that has shaped our city to be re-written so easily. Changing the ordinance will also effectively make the Human Relations Commission, a party-planning group…” “There is no such thing as having too many opportunities for citizens to voice their concerns.”

Dean Johanson, spoke on behalf of the Yolo County ACLU. He voiced the ACLU’s “opposition to any change in the ordinance as it stands now.” Furthermore, “as an individual who has in the past used the Human Relations Commission, I do think that what you are calling, ‘evolving,’ is actually de-evolution, you’re actually going back in time by making these changes.”

I also spoke on the need to keep to a mechanism that is free of court action that would enforce the anti-discrimination ordinance. Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald, my wife, and former chair of the Commission, spoke about some of the cases that the HRC actually dealt with and their role in bringing about changes in the school district’s climate policy, the city hate crimes, and other programs that dealt with civil rights.

Former HRC Chair Bill Ritter,

“In the nine years I served, this was an important task of the Commission, it was important because it gave teeth to the anti-discrimination ordinance, an avenue by which citizens could come and work out their problems as they perceived them.”

Mr. Ritter pointed out that the mediations services have always been a part of the process. In one case, the city manager, followed up with a private investigator to follow-up on the research that the commission had done.

Former HRC Chair, Tansey Thomas, also spoke out against the changes she cited a number of reports and recommendations that were not followed through upon.

Councilmember Heystek pressed City Manager Bill Emlen as to where he would be providing referrals to investigate or mediate the complaint of individuals. Emlen in fact had no idea and dodged Heystek’s question twice. First, stating it would depend on the nature of the complaint. And second stating, “I think they’ve been mentioned this evening the various options that are available.” Both of these were essentially dodges and non-answers.

Councilmember Souza then asked several key questions of City Attorney Harriet Steiner.

Souza: “Do we have to do anything in order to keep the ordinance legal in its intent and the resolution in the Human Relations Commission? Can we leave it as it is?”

Steiner: “I think we probably could leave it as it is.”

Souza: “Does any city commission, in particular the Human Relations Commission, have the ability under law to investigate?”

Steiner: “None of our commissions would actually provide what lawyers think of as a non-biased investigation, none of the commissions with the possible exception of the personnel board that we talked about before, really are set up to do an equivalent to what the courts do. Many of our commissions listen to the citizens, provide forums for issues, and come to a policy recommendation to the city council with an appropriate recommendation…”

This is actually a key statement because Steiner is speaking in terms of how lawyers think about the term, “investigation,” rather than other possible definitions of the word. It was Mayor Greenwald who demonstrated from the text of the ordinance that the intent was never to “adjudicate” and always referred to a much less formal mechanism of mediation and investigation. The ordinance specifically states that the findings are not admissible in court, implying strongly that the HRC was not to be a body that investigates in the manner in which Steiner speaks of the term “investigate.”

Greenwald pointed out that the council was not provided a copy of the actual ordinance.

Mayor Greenwald's reading of the ordinance was: “yes the Commission can investigate and mediate, but it would not provide material for action.”

Harriet stated that it says, “the findings and conclusions are not admissible in court for a civil action.”

Greenwald: “Investigation and mediation does not have only one definition.”

Harriet: “That’s what I was trying to say. There are different kinds of investigation and different kinds of proceedings. An investigation to come forward to have a community forum is a different kind of investigation than an investigation to try to adjudicate an individual complaint against another individual against a city employee.”

Harriet: “I don’t know that the Human Relations Commission has ever been in a position where it has taken an individual complaint and tried to come up with the answer as to what should happen on that particular complaint as opposed to a larger issue and what the community should do...”

The discussion seemed to turn on the term, “adjudicate.” The perception of the council seemed to be that the ordinance authorized the HRC to adjudicate a complaint, when in fact the language of the ordinance precluded such action and it had never been the practice of the HRC to adjudicate. It was Mayor Greenwald’s teasing out the term that led to this clarification and seemed to change the course of the meeting.

During this discussion, Mayor Pro Tem Asmundson and Councilmember Stephen Souza were conferencing. Suddenly, Asmundson stated that there was an announcement from the subcommittee.

Souza stated: “I would suggest, given the first answer to the question about whether we could just leave the ordinance as is, that I would move that we leave the ordinance as is, and that we direct the liaison to the Human Relations Commission to explain the other avenues that are available and clarify the meaning, and provide the information as to the avenues that are available for mediation and complaints.”

There was an air of disbelief, as it appeared briefly that the council minority could not believe what they had just heard and sitting in the audience, I had the same feeling. It was quite stunning given the direction of the conversation up until the last few moments.

Heystek quickly regained the initiative at this point however, and pressured the council to reconcile between the language of the ordinance and the language of the authorizing resolution of the HRC. He pointed out that in the future, councilmembers would not be reading the motions made on this date, but rather the language in the resolution. He spoke forcefully and ultimately prevailed in getting the subcommittee to re-write the resolution to include some of the language of the ordinance to make it clear that they had the ability to mediate and investigate, but not adjudicate (again a power that the Commission never had to begin with).

By a 5-0 vote, the city council not only left unchanged the historic anti-discrimination ordinance, but also appeared, and I stress appeared, since there will have to be another item on this in the future, to restore the previous power of the Human Relations Commission to what it had been prior to its being disbanded in June of last year.

This was the most stunned I have ever been at a council verdict and in many ways I still am not clear as to what happened. It appeared that public comment moved the council. It appeared even prior to the meeting, that perhaps criticism of the initial proposal, perhaps from this blog, moved the council to use stronger wording. And it appeared that the discussion brought up by Mayor Greenwald with regards to the issue of adjudication probably provided the final death knell.

Souza justified it by the answer that Harriet Steiner gave to his first question, but in fact he asked four questions and it appeared by the fourth question that he was simply lining it up for his eventual victory asking her about the role of adjudication and whether the ordinance itself was proper. Steiner’s response was that she was always uncomfortable with the language of the ordinance. The fourth question was about police oversight, a question and answer that were discussed at length last year and that Souza fully knew the answer to.

Thus my only conclusion is that somewhere during the course of that discussion, the issue of definition of investigation arose and the issue of adjudication made it clear that the ordinance never intended to authorize nor did the Commission ever act as a body that adjudicates individual complaints.

I will point out that people last year charged that the HRC was trying to become a de-facto civilian review board for police complaints, but that is not true. What the HRC was doing was taking individual complaints and attempting to advocate a general policy—the construction of a civilian review board. The council rejected that proposal, but that was the HRC’s intent, not to adjudicate the Buzayan case or any of the other individual cases. Those cases were only used to provide examples for a policy change.

It is very important to note that the HRC was never granted the power of subpoena nor did they ever seek to use the subpoena power. The charge was made that the commission overstepped their bounds and misused their power, but as we saw last night, it has be acknowledged that is simply untrue given that they never attempted to adjudicate individual cases. We can disagree on the forcefulness with which the commission conducted its business, but that alone does not mean that the commission was not outside of its charge.

In the end, the council did the right thing last night, but one must severely question several aspects of the proceedings. First, the late change of text for the ordinance butts up against a violation of the Brown Act which requires a period of proper noticing to the public. That change caught all involved off-guard. Second, the lack of preparation on the part of the subcommittee was irresponsible. Souza’s question of Steiner could have taken place in private and having her opinion that there was no conflict could have mitigated against this discussion. Third, the lack of staff providing of resources including the ordinance is appalling. Fourth, Souza’s admission that he had only read the minutes of the 1986 discussion last night, prior to the meeting, was not only appalling, but disrespectful to the work of past councils. Finally, this entire discussion embodies a sort of lack of preparation and lack of professionalism. It was clear from the discussion that neither the council nor staff really understood the history of the Commission or how they have operated in the past.

This is not surprising in light of the controversy that happened last year that in my opinion, as a very biased observer, was greatly distorted in the public realm. That is not to suggest that the Commission acted without error that is far from the case, however, their intents and their actions were greatly distorted in the heat of a political campaign and the heat of public scrutiny.

In Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald’s closing comments during her public remarks, she asked the council

“to take this historic anti-discrimination ordinance and instead of stripping it of its protections, to move in the other direction to make it stronger. I ask you to take these fractured ties in this community and bring us together. I ask you to lift up those who have suffered in this past year from hopelessness and despair and give them hope and guidance that the City of Davis will not turn its back on its commitment to civil rights.”

In many ways, a year removed from the controversy, when things could be treated with reflection rather than with impulse, they have done exactly that. The question though is really whether it is too late. The results last night stunned us all, but they also served to reinvigorate us. It was the first time in a long time that we had any sense of optimism, accomplishment and hope.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting